5 Things a Video Platform Does That Video Conferencing Tools Don't

Video conferencing tools like GoToMeeting, Adobe Connect, Skype for Business (formerly Lync), and WebEx are great for connecting small groups for live, interactive meetings. These tools excel at real-time information exchange — but the ideas and insights shared during these sessions typically aren’t saved anywhere and are all too often simply lost when the meeting ends.

A video platform improves knowledge sharing from experts with their peers, even if that expert isn’t around. Developers, analysts, project owners, architects, and other subject matter experts (SMEs) can simply record a short video of themselves answering common questions and make it available on-demand in your online video platform.

Now everyone in your organization has anytime access to their expertise — and it will rid your experts’ schedules of meetings with others requesting the same information over and over again.

Due to the technology required for real-time interactive video, video conferencing tools limit your audience to several hundred or a thousand people.

That’s usually more than enough for a meeting — but what about an investor relations call? A worldwide all-staff town hall meeting? A user conference? Or any of the myriad of other reasons a few hundred seats would be far too few?

A video platform with live webcasting technology uses a different underlying video delivery mechanism, allowing it to scale to tens of thousands of people or more — ideal for broadcasting presentations and events to massive audiences around the world.

Video conferencing tools are nice for conversations, but they aren’t built for the purpose of recording and sharing simultaneous screencasts and video presentations. Many video conferencing solutions don’t record actual video at all — limiting you to just audio and a low-resolution recording of the presenter’s screen. Even then, because the tools were not designed as recorders, the workflow to capture a presentation is often quite cumbersome.

Sharing screens, adding additional webcams, and other recording techniques you could use to better show your content and make your point simply aren’t possible with most conferencing tools. By contrast, a modern video platform enables you to capture product demos and presentations with broadcast-quality audio and full-screen HD video. Share multiple video feeds to show every angle, and add on-screen recordings and presentation slides to really make your case (and set your company apart).

Best of all, recording presentations helps you scale. According to Adobe, 55% of webinar-type events are viewed after-the-fact as a recording. If your presentation isn’t available after the call ends, you’re missing almost half your potential audience — meaning you’re either missing out on opportunities or sentencing yourself to time-wasting repeat performances.

Video conferencing tools are great for small meetings and webinars. But what if you want to record a professional-looking virtual event with multiple camera angles and HD video cameras?

Video conferencing simply isn’t built for events. Without another tool, your only choice is to call in the AV experts — and pay the expert-sized costs.

A video platform, however, can help you avoid that cost — and create the same high-quality, professional videos faster too. Leading companies like Siemens already record internal events with no more than laptops and webcams — saving time and money.

With the right video platform, you can record from any video camera into any laptop — even capture multiple video streams across a network of PCs. The video platform will automatically sync all those files and upload everything into your video library, where you can quickly edit the final files and share them with anyone you choose — all in minutes instead of weeks.

Your video CMS can even live-stream your event video, helping you to extend your conferences to attendees around the world — and save money by eliminating travel costs.

Well if you didn’t hit “record” in your web conferencing tool, nothing at all. And even if you did — not much. Conferencing tools can often record calls, but the usefulness of those native recordings is generally quite limited:

No centralized library in which to store the file

No editing tools to fine-tune the recording

No content indexing systems to make the video searchable

Often you are left with either just a link back to the conferencing systems’ servers, or a giant file sitting on your desktop — neither a particularly useful storage spot.

With a video platform, your recordings are automatically uploaded to a video content management system (or video CMS) where they’re transcribed and indexed so that people can easily find and view recorded content on-demand from anywhere.

The value of a real video content management system only multiplies as your organization begins creating more and more video. Most businesses already have a massive cache of video scattered across file shares and SharePoint sites, where they eat up storage space but are often too difficult for other employees to find and use. No conferencing tool in the world can help manage those existing videos — but a video platform with a video content management system can quickly upload, transcribe, index, and share them across your entire company, often in just a couple clicks.

Businesses need more than video conferencing.

Find out more, including five ways a video platform can help maximize your investment in video as well as practical recommendations for enterprise video from industry leaders like Gartner, Forrester, Siemens, Microsoft, and more in our latest white paper.